Word Study Activities from Words Their Way

The following activities come from what many consider to be the bible of word study, Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction by Donald Bear, Marcia Invernizzi, Shane Templeton, and Francine Johnston.

If you like these exercises, you might consider purchasing this book--it"s packed with even more great ideas. We thank Prentice-Hall, Inc. for their permission to link to the following lessons from the Words Their Way web site.

As students identify letters in differing cases and fonts, they become better able to recognize letters in new contexts. Should you decide to continue this exercise with other letters in the alphabet, it"s quite easy to print similar pages using different fonts in your word processing program.

I"ve seen for myself how well "picture sort" activities help students make connections between spoken sounds and their corresponding letters or letter groups. The student will pick up a card picturing an object such as a shoe, and try to determine if it begins with "ch", "sh", or "th." This simple game may supply the missing link that your student needs to "crack the code" of written language!

Word sorts are highly effective in teaching students to find patterns that make decoding easier. Word sorts are used extensively to teach concepts from elementary word families to more sophisticated language concepts. Exercises such as this word sort enable students to more easily recognize word families, which helps in decoding new words with similar patterns.

I"ve included these exercises to demonstrate how word study may be used to teach even more advanced concepts in spelling and vocabulary. But if your student is in a literacy program, he or she is likely to need practice in the earlier reading levels, above.

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